The strange being turned and moved his hand slowly, as if caressing the air. Suddenly, to her astonishment, three floating panels appeared in front of her. They seemed more like those of a futuristic movie, than of the present. The one that caught her attention had a detailed image of her. She was depicted from head to toe; but she was naked, even though her sex and breasts were indistinguishable. She felt relieved by that, but also uncomfortable to see the nakedness of her pretty body in front of that stranger.
She touched that panel and began to move through a series of very intuitive menus. She could see her bones, nerves, veins, organs, muscles and much more. All perfectly separated with quite detailed specifications and clarifications.
Addressing a completely astonished Emily. "Doesn't any of this ring a bell? Don’t you remember it?" Emily denied in puzzlement.
"Here you can see how any part of your body is doing, what you need to improve for the future and what nutrients you need. You can also see your stored nutrients, plus your fat stores, water, and everything else that makes up your body. You know, what you have studied in school and high school. Like I told you back then. “You are what you eat!” The strange being smiled. "Luckily you've never been fond of that junk food so typical of your world." Emily was still looking at it puzzled. She couldn't remember ever seeing anything like that.
The strange being continued kindly. "Don't you remember you asked me to put up some kind of stats? Though such a thing doesn't actually exist. I already told you. You are the result of many factors at every moment and under certain circumstances. Which can't be so easily summarized in parameters."
Emily kept denying. "You must be mistaking me for someone else. I've never seen anything like this."
The strange being smiled. "You don't remember then? Well, you will do it after your first fights."
Emily flinched at the thought of actually fighting someone. “F-fights?”
The strange being nodded calmly. "I must warn you that where you will go, there are no doctors, and medicines are really scarce and ineffective. Although there are certain places where you will be able to heal faster. I anticipate they are uncommon and difficult to access."
She stammered. "B-but I d-don't…"
The strange being interrupted her, gesturing. "Relax. You'll soon remember that this is all like a character menu where you’re the character; with the center panel filled with detailed information about your physique and two side panels with the knowledge you must acquire and everything you must achieve."
She puzzled. "Achieve? For what?"
The strange being smiled. "Don't forget who you are and who you wanted to be."
After trying to assimilate just a little bit of all that information, she tried to look for one more panel as the strange man smiled. "No, don't look for your inventory, your map, your diary or your skill tree. Those are necessary things in a video game where the connection between man and machine are really limited. In real life, all that information is in your head." He pointed to the knowledge menu and tapped the inventory submenu. "Right now you have nothing on you, so there is nothing here."
As a reflex, she looked at her body. To her surprise, she was completely naked. She covered herself as fast as she could. "OMG! I've been naked the whole time?!" She understood that the strange being had been looking her straight in the eye all along, despite having a really beautiful and stunning body.
"There is nothing to be ashamed of, Emily. You can stay covered up if you wish, but it's like a father seeing his newborn baby."
Emily assimilated those words making up her mind that he could really be a God or something similar. She fleetingly thought of all the depictions they would have given about God in the movies. "This one certainly doesn't look much like Morgan Freeman" She thought as she smiled.
The strange being turned to the central panel. Different emerging panels popped up without being summoned. They were all small except one. It seemed larger and had a warning exclamation. It came from her brain. The strange being paused quizzically at that small panel and then turned to Emily. "Does your head hurt?"
She nodded touching her forehead lightly. "A little, yes. Ever since that... old woman gave me those terrible visions."
He looked at that panel again and expanded it. The emergency was coming from a minute place on the right side of her brain. The strange being stood for a few seconds looking at it.
Emily asked curiously, but shyly. "Is something wrong?"
The slightly concerned being pointed to her head. “If you stop refusing what I offered you and fix that battle you have going on in that beautiful head of yours, it will fix itself”. Then he smiled reassuringly at her.
He continued as if it were a lecture. "The knowledge and objectives of the side panels are very important. Without them you would get lost among the millions of directions you can take. Let me give you an example. The strange being touched a menu called food within knowledge. There, you could see an endless number of foods. He touched salmon and a bigger menu popped up. It showed a table of properties where the variables were practically all known. "You've eaten a lot of salmon in your life, haven't you?".
She nodded blushing. "Yes, when I was a child. My mother used to obligate me. She used to tell me it was good for me. That it was rich in Omega-3. Now I don't eat it. It has too much fat."
The strange being smiled. "Very beneficial, yes. Fat too, it's true. But for someone who does a lot of exercise and can't eat whenever they feel like it, that fat will be very necessary. You're going to find soon enough you're going to have to exercise a lot to keep up" He tapped where it said omega 3 and watched as a submenu appeared within the knowledge panel. The being summed it up. "It's a potent anti-inflammatory and your brain benefits from it by improving your cognitive ability. In other words it improves your intellectual capacity."
Emily was surprised to see how that information was a step-by-step for improving her stats. Then she frowned. "A somewhat complicated step-by-step."
The strange being read on. "Nuts have it too, and certain vegetables, but mostly oily fish, shellfish, eggs, and certain seeds. Although, that your knowledge doesn't put it. Well, you didn't know that.
Emily watched in amazement as suddenly, everything he said was appearing there written down, bit by bit.
Then the strange being scrolled through the knowledge menu and went to a section that said skills. He stopped at the ones that said fishing and gathering. Both fishing and gathering were at 0%. The being saw it and smiled. "You'll have to get on that if you want to feed well and build the perfect character."
She frowned. "I thought you got smarter by studying"
The strange being explained attentively. "Have you ever seen any athlete build muscle without protein? Just as protein is necessary to improve muscles, exercising, and increase strength; omega 3 is essential so that when you study, you improve your intelligence."
She looked at the floor. "I've been feeling less and less smart for a few years now. Is it because I don't eat what I need?"
The strange being clarified after hearing her thoughts. "Partly yes, and partly it's because of the stress. You're under a lot of stress because of Beth. That's not going to get better anytime soon, I'm afraid. Where you’re going, you’re going to face many dangers that will make you believe the stress you have been under, was merely a walk in the park."
She looked at him, nervously. "How can I reduce my stress."
He smiled. "It's very simple and very difficult at the same time. Besides, it's your ultimate goal! Become invincible, Emily! An invincible being is not afraid of anything."
Emily opened her eyes wide, perplexed by such a crazy statement. "How can I become invincible?"
The being turned his back to her. "You, to an ant, are invincible; to a bird too, as well as to a cat. In addition, among them it's easy to tell who is invincible to whom, isn't it?" Turning he concluded. Power difference, Emily. That's what makes you invincible. Power is the sum of your whole being."
He pointed to the center panel, changing the subject, as Emily absorbed everything he had said. "The center panel contains a lot of information about your body that you will have to explore on your own. You could do this usually when you fall asleep or when you learn how to do it by concentrating." Then he smiled." No. There is no pause here. There isn't in real life either, is there?" The man extended his hand towards her again. "Ready?"
Emily, flustered and unsure, stammered. "R-ready for what?" The being suddenly grabbed her hand as he saw her so unsure. Finally, everything went dark.
In a flash, she noticed her floating in the darkness, accompanied by thousands of very small lights coming bottom to top. That made her feel like she was falling. Suddenly, a luminescent floating progress bar appeared, followed by a voice echoing everywhere.
"Initializing protocol. Initiating scan and parameter reset. Please, stand by!"
When the progressive bar filled up, a sort of gigantic table of statistics, attributes and skills appeared in front of her. It had a lot of numbers that started to fluctuate very fast, then very little, and finally stopped. She tried to read them but at that very moment some skills lit up and others disappeared. That caused the numbers accompanying the stats to change again.
When the table of statistics finished changing, it shrank and integrated into the three panels that appeared briefly only to disappear again. The strange voice spoke again.
"Reset completed. Certain misadjustments that prevented access to the menu have been removed. There is still a serious problem that could not be fixed. It’s causing among other anomalies; memory fragmentation and multiple internal personality. It’s impossible to repair this error without outside help and without a serious loss of the subject's identity."
Emily listened perplexed. "Serious problem? Loss of identity? What was preventing me from seeing that menu? Why can I see a menu and since when? Where did that voice come from? From me? Then, what the hell am I? She took a nervous breath. "At least I don't have a headache."
Everything was happening so fast and she was so flustered that she had not been able to read anything. "I understand that I couldn't configure anything. It's obvious that I'm the character and I am what I am, but you could at least let me watch it patiently, couldn't you?"
Before she could even get more indignant, she lost consciousness. She was plunged into darkness and unconsciousness for what might seem like an eternity. Then, slowly, Emily began to wake up. She was uncomfortable and lying down. She guessed she was back in her room, in her bed, but something was wrong. The mattress wasn't soft like hers. She blinked endlessly until she could see better. Stunned, she saw that she was lying on a bed of straw.
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